To ensure that retail merchandise stocked upon a retail shelf is suitably presented to a potential customer, it is desirable to situate the merchandise in a neat orientation near the front edge of the retail shelf by “facing” the merchandise. Examples of merchandise that is typically faced include beverage containers and digital video discs. The process of facing often involves sliding the merchandise, which is typically situated upon a retail shelf in rows, toward a front edge of the shelf. Merchandise may be manually faced by hand by store employees, or self-faced using a mechanical apparatus generally known in the art as a pusher system. Manually facing merchandise is a tedious and time consuming chore for store employees that must be performed often, and therefore results in the inefficient use of labor. Pusher systems offer the advantage of reducing inefficiency in the work place, and therefore there is a growing desire to incorporate pusher systems into a variety of new and existing retail environments.
Typically, a pusher system includes a front fence, a number of dividers and multiple pushers. To face the merchandise using the pusher system, the merchandise is loaded into a channel defined by two or more adjacent dividers. The dividers assist in maintaining the merchandise in a linear row within the channel. A pusher, also situated within the channel and movable toward and away from the front fence, biases the row of merchandise forward until the front most unit of merchandise is in engageable contact with the front fence at the front edge of the retail shelf. The front fence, dividers, and pushers of a pusher system thus work in combination to face the retail merchandise along a retail shelf. A typical pusher system is a moderately complex assembly that includes multiple pushers and multiple dividers commonly connected to the front fence. The pushers, dividers, and front fence are typically designed in a custom fashion such that the components are not interchangeable with other pusher systems. An exemplary design of such pusher systems describe above is shown in U.S. Patent Application Publication US 2007/0267364 assigned to the present assignee.
There continues to be a large number of retail environments where merchandise is inefficiently faced manually because of the large amounts of capital initially invested in shelving and divider systems that do not employ pusher systems. Therefore, there is a growing need for the ability to quickly and efficiently incorporate the benefits of a pusher system into these retail environments without also replacing the existing components of the shelving and divider systems used therein. Moreover, there is a need for retail display systems that can optimize retail space usage due to the increasing stratification of merchandise offered in a retail environment. The present invention is directed at providing a solution to one or more of these issues.